Everybody is dumb

The only person named in this article who comes off as not being a total idiot is Lloyd Newton, who's quoted right at the end. You know, after you've read the rest and already decided everybody involved in the dramatic and operatic arts in Britain, including the author of the article, is an irredeemable jackass one way or another. I especially like the "it's a bit like saying to play Macbeth you have to be a murderer" simile.

Oh la la la la. It comes to this - it's opera, people. Don't mess with it.

Or I'll mess with you.

Fuck.

Fucking pirates

Fuck them. I watched a pirated copy of A History of Violence last night and it stopped, like, five minutes before the end . . . and those five minutes would have probably made up my mind about whether or not I liked it. Bloody bootlegs! I've never bought one myself and now I guess I won't in the future. It has decided me to reward myself for finishing my glossary today (I shall overcome) by going to see The Constant Gardener in an actual cinema somewhere someday.

Anyways, I'm in a Red Dragon Pisser today. Nothing's actually the matter, besides your standard creepy zeitgeist and my life being eaten by my thesis and - hmm - something I can't quite put my finger on. Oh yeah. Viggo Mortensen has never gone down on me. Ever! Isn't that the richest bullshit you've ever heard? I pay my taxes and put my pants on one leg at a time. So what the hell is up with that? Oh shut up, Mlle. One day, when I have the money and the professional flexibility, I'm going to ride out the Red Dragon liminal-style during spirit-quests in the forest; eating raw meat, smoking reefer, and howling at the moon. Until that day, here's an utterly too-too photograph of the inspirational tsunami hippo-tortoise pair to cheer me up and make you feel better for reading my whinge.

Argh

You know what sucks? Writing a glossary. It's like kicking yourself in the teeth. You know what rocks? Eating persimmons. I went to Chinatown East, and there they were, 3 for a dollar. You can do the most marvellous things with persimmons.

Winter has its points - like persimmon season, that sweet sharp kick in the air that's so nice when I'm dressed warm enough, and hot chocolate. Winter in Calabria is beautiful. They leave orange peels on top of thier woodstoves to flavour their houses.

And their days are more than four. Fucking. Hours. Long. Come back, Mr. Sunshine. Come baaaaack.

Rocks off

Birthday list has got bigger as I pay more attention to the deficiencies of my collection of possessions - Opera glasses, subscription to the Economist or Foreign Affairs, music, books, a surprise, a wallet, a proper warm hoodie, pretty winter accessories, or a pasta scoop dealy.

Carrying on. This isn’t the right blog to read if you want details of someone’s emotional or sexual life. Things like ‘I could hardly see it’ or ‘the dumb bastard had stubble on them’ might pop out, and the men concerned might read them. This would suck since I wouldn't want to hurt them by pointing out things they can’t help, and I wouldn't want to point out the obvious fact that they should keep their bits either hairy or naked but not in between. Because any man who's dim enough to let his bits go stubbly deserves the contempt he gets for it. It's like an Early Warning System of catastrophic inconsiderateness.

Meeeee-ow. See, the pure scratch-factor of those last two sentences is why I don't write about these things concretely. But I have been thinking about sex in a couple of abstract ways.

First, I was talking to Little G on November 14 after posting what I thought was an inconsequential blab about semantics, Messalina, and the sad logic of the lousiness of men who sleep with loose girls. I was telling her how some of my Euro-students had a hard time telling the difference between slut and whore, and then I remembered the Italians also had a hard time distinguishing slut-whore from bitch. We chatted a bit about this, and she pointed out that while indeed it was awkward, English was deficient in that we don’t really have a word that embraces all three ideas. So we made one: blorch. It's a very hard thing to call someone without laughing, which is nice but just might block its acceptance into common language. I can't imagine it being yelled in the heat of anger by the sort of lame-ass people who actually use such words in seriousness.

And then, REEFER MADNESS! I was 'outside with the courgettes', as the Italians say, and talking to someone about something, and the question of when to sleep with someone you know you’re interested in came up. Someone argued it should be right away, since if you wait the interest often ebbs before you get your rocks off, or else you get a warped view of his personality because he’s altering his behavior in a wildly unpredictable way to get you to spread. It was probably me who argued that, since though I’m no man-layin’ dynamo I can’t think of a good ‘get to know first’ argument offhand besides not having any condoms. Would anybody like to fill in the blanks?

Real Jewelry

Finished I, Claudius. That’s the last miniseries I’m renting for awhile – at least when I get a mad jones on to swallow a book whole I can take it to work and read it on lunch breaks, maybe on the metro – but then the principal thing is BOOKS AREN’T ON A DAMNABLE SCREEN. I stare at damnable screens all day at work, either the computer or the screening television. Oh flashing pictures.

One lovely-ass book I just finished reading more or less concurrently with watching I, Claudius and drafting my cocksucking thesis for the third cocksucking time is Angels and Insects, by A.S. Byatt. How do I read, write, and watch all these things while drinking, smoking, and socializing too much? A cocktail of insomnia and multi-tasking. Anyways, I read half of Angels and Insects – Morpho Eugenia – some time ago. The other half is the novella The Conjugial Angel.

The novellas are jewels of books. Coherent stories and breathing characters running through an atmosphere of thought, poetry, the body and physical sciences; the sorts of thing Leonardo da Vinci might have written if he wrote intimate suspenseful novellas. All the while using kind, simple language. Language like silk! Provoking the reader to thought while not dictating. The Conjugial Angel, especially; that one novella brings more light to the marriage of the male mind to the female’s than any other book I can think of offhand - all in the framework of the Victorian séance craze. It almost hurts to read because it hurts so little. Like putting on Blundstones after walking around in platforms like a bloody coked-up fool for a month (wonder how I know how that feels).

I heart A.S. Byatt, to rip off an expression from Smellypants. I read Possession a few years ago too. I liked it a lot, though not as much as these novellas. Possession got made into a movie. Hmm. The movie from Morpho Eugenia, Angels and Insects (starring Patsy Kensit among others – remember her? That cute blonde pixie who got with all those Britpop guys?) wasn’t bad; quite beautiful in fact, but suffered from all the texts that got left out. More so than usual with film treatments – read the novella and you’ll know just what I mean. Even though I liked Possession less than Morpho Eugenia, and usually the more I like books the less I want to see the film, I really don’t want to see the movie Possession. The way Gwyneth Paltrow always looks like she’s about to stamp her foot and cry stops me from suspending my disbelief. Except in the Royal Tanenbaums, where it fits into that sweet-ass movie like a key in an oiled lock. Anyways, I’m reading The Game now – first twenty pages are awesome – I’ll let you know how it comes together.

On another note, I fell deeply in love this morning. Five minutes later, my heart was broken. Fastest passion of my life to date. It was a Quebecois man, narrating a series of cooking commercials dressed as a chef, on a campaign for a food store that shall remain nameless. He showed me how to stuff portobello mushroom caps, roast vegetables in duck fat, and make panna cotta - and then the trafficking woman in Montréal told me - she told me - she told me he was just an actor pretending to be a chef. NOOOOOOOOO! OH, WILL THESE DECEPTIONS NEVER END! The lying bastard, toying with my emotions like that. WHY GOD? WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS HEARTBREAK?

All of which is to say, I'm kind of hungry.

One woman metaphor

I installed a message board on this blog. Is that what you call them? It was on the side bar - and it had opinions about dirty words. It bleeped them. So of course the Italian and French dirty words got spouted, and now it's gone, because it was giving Queen Smellypants pop-ups.

My advisor and a dear friend who has taken pity on my linguistic penuries are checking the latest draft of my asshole thesis. So relaxation last night in the form of reefer and more I, Claudius. Watched up until Messalina got decapitated. Man, Messalina. She’s out of fashion now but her name used to be synonymous with a vicious she-beast of an epic super slut. For example, this passage from Jane Eyre wherein Mr. Rochester explains to the title character how his genteel whore mongering was different from his mad wife’s profligacy:

I tried dissipation, never debauchery: that I hated, and hate. That was my Indian Messalina’s attribute: rooted disgust at it and her restrained me much, even in pleasure. Any enjoyment that bordered on riot seemed to approach me to her and her vices, and I eschewed it.

We don’t know what nasty shit Mrs. Rochester got up to before being locked up in her husband’s attic, but it does grate on the reason that he should get all pissy about it while describing fucking his way across Europe to the adoring woman he just tried to turn into a unconscious bigamist. Silly Mr. Rochester. Nonetheless, what a marvel a woman’s name can be such a strong metaphor almost 2000 years after her death. Like Jezebel, who’s even more epic since the stories about her aren’t so graphic and she’s even longer dead. It's ironic that these women probably didn’t do half the shit they’re credited with – the impressions we have of them now are likely post-mortem defamations from victorious enemies – yet language remembers THEM, not the victors.

When I was teaching English, I remarked time and again that many of my students - the Italians in particular - had a hard time distinguishing between ‘whore’ and ‘slut’. The notion that whores sell, sluts give, and this distinction is important seemed as foreign as English itself to many of them. At the time I thought that was just a bit of Latin silliness. I’ve since realized that bit of silliness is far more common than I once thought. It’s also less important, since both families of words are used as vicious pejoratives all over the place.

How very insulting. I declare, if I was a straight man I don’t know how I would be able to stand it; a widespread, ingrained notion that if a woman wants to nail you, she’s a crappy person, professionally engaged, or both? You poor bastards. Are you content to be considered so repulsive and sub-human? Rise up, men. Stop letting the world slap you down like naughty dogs by insulting us. It may be a long and hard battle. But one day, you shall achieve equality. You shall overcome!

TV, oh, TV

*****************UPDATE******************

I've been thinking, or rather I haven't but things have been occurring to me nonetheless, and I've thought of birthday presents that are somewhat more easily obtained than a pony or fixing Lebanon. Maybe people can split on them.

1. Opera glasses
2. A subscription to the Economist or Foreign Affairs
3. Music
4. Books
5. A surprise

Hope that helps.

Carry on . . .

*****************************************


So yesterday I remembered how to do schoolwork and finished revision #3 of my bloody cocksucking thesis. The memory/discovery was unwitting. I rented the first few episodes of I, Claudius a while ago and by early afternoon couldn't wait to see them any longer. Once I'd seen the first three episodes I felt compelled to go rent 6 more. Only be sheer force of will did I manage to not go rent the last six episodes after those were done - that and I'd already put on my pyjamas.

So one point of this story is that as soon as I put the first DVD in I remembered I'd done my first degree essentially in front of the television. It helps to have a diversion every time I lift my eyes from the paper/screen so I don't feel the need to get up and do something else, and I manage to sit at one task for hours. I know it sounds bullshitty, but I promise for me it works.

The second point of this story is that I, Claudius is fucking awesome. I, Claudius and Claudius the God have been two of my favourite books for years, and it turns out the way Robert Graves wrote them lends itself well to a long miniseries with lots of detail, characters, and considerable fidelity to the original. It was made ages ago when John Hurt (Caligula) was boyish and Patrick Stewart (Sejanus) was beefcake-y, so the effects and the camerawork are ancient. However, the acting can't be denied. Some of it is stylized as for the stage, but disbelief-suspension is never a problem. John Hurt, Derek Jacobi (as Claudius) and Sian Phillips (Livia) are maybe the super-crazy-excellent performances so far, but everybody is good. The risks the actors were willing to take, the way they put themselves out there, made themselves ugly and terrible. . . It's incredible.

And the plot is beautifully intricate and gruesome. Sopranos and Oz and such didn't break any new ground in that sense. Or course the plot of the book and the history of Imperial Rome were already intricate and gruesome, but the way it's presented in this miniseries drives it home. Felt quite pukey when I went to bed last night after the scene - oh, can't write it. Too gruesome, though not graphic. Essentially, like Oz, you have to accept that all the characters you're identifying with emotionally are going to die in some complicated, violent, sickening way soon. Oh, I can't wait for the last six episodes. I don't miss TV. . . I miss good TV.

Fully cloth'd beauty

Despite the loveliness you see pictured, Renaud, the tenor-hero of Armide prettily sung by Colin Ainsworth, kept most of his clothes on. There was a scene where he kept running on and off stage each time a little less dressed wherein I thought he’d get naked, but no such luck. It was an extremely pleasing spectacle nonetheless. The title mezzo, Stephanie Novacek, was brilliant. The power and emotion of that voice in the context of a stylized Baroque opera was incredible. Bang fucking on. All the singers were good, particularly the baritones, (Curtis Sullivan made Hate look and sound like it was all you needed) and the Tafelmusik choir was lovely.

The Elgin Theatre is a perfect venue for Opera Atelier because of its Baroque splendour and intimacy, a point driven home by using the boxes for the chorus and the occasional goddess-pose of an acting soprano. And far be it from Opera Atelier to shy from Baroque splendour. It was lush – the sound, the set, and the ballet. Without being dumb. The only cringe-worthy lush moments were with the strap-on wings of the dancer playing Love (not securely fastened, so when he really got going they bounced around with an absurd life of their own) and with some dancers dressed up as tables doing their thing around Renaud. Otherwise, so well-put together and beautifully sung was it that despite the lushness, distractingly hot scantily clad (and apparently stuffed - or maybe just huge? a girl can dream) male dancers, and the super-stylized poses of the protagonists, by the time Armide brought the opera to its crashing conclusion my disbelief was suspended somewhere above the rooftops. And I wasn’t even on drugs.

Two complaints, neither to do with the performance itself, but the lead up. First was how it was advertised, and I don’t mean Naked Renaud. Here’s an excerpt from the flyer:

This opera has an extraordinary resonance for us today as it deals with the conflict between the Christian world (represented by the knight Renaud) and its perception of the Muslim world as the “axis of evil” (represented by the Muslim sorceress, Armide).

Except it doesn’t. This opera deals with love/hate relationships, sex, and emotional honesty. It HAPPENS to deals with these things in a plot wherein Armide is a very unlikely Muslim woman (I don’t think Muslims are big on sorcery, nor on parading their women in front of foreign troops) and Renaud is a very unlikely Christian man (his character is more like a Classical warrior than a chivalrous Crusader). We never hear the religious mentioned; it’s all sorcery and pagan addictions to Glory. The idea that this opera has any religious or ethnic ‘resonance’ is facile and irresponsible – especially considering how it ends.

Second complaint: Marshall Pynkoski. Staging Baroque operas beautifully for decades in Toronto must be the artistic equivalent of scaling Everest freestyle twice a year, and I don’t grudge him mad props for that. But dude, shut the fuck up before the shows. He goes on these spiels – he did when I saw Dido and Aeneas/Actéon last spring, and considering last night was the final performance of Armide I think he does it every night. He recites the synopsis – a piss-off because it’s already in our programs and we know how to read, fuck you very much, and because he was giving away theatrical twists that should have came as a surprise even to those of us who know the operas.

Also he explains his interpretation of the story, which I don’t want to hear, I want to experience! That’s why he’s an artistic director and not a professor; or more properly, that’s why I’m a spectator, not a music major. In the words of Monsieur F, he spoonfeeds us. But anybody who is already interested in Baroque opera doesn’t need to be spoonfed, he’s singing to the choir . . . we especially don’t need to be spoonfed crap about how Armide is allegorical of Christian/Muslim relations. Not to mention he’s got the Tafelmusik players waiting in the pit, for god’s sake, with all their Baroque instruments that go out of tune if you breathe on them. Merde, c’était schiant.